Pro-Reform Journalist Detained in Iran

Published 7:00 pm, Monday, February 17, 2003

A prominent pro-reform journalist who has described the hard-line establishment as dictatorial was detained at home Tuesday, according to his son.

Mohsen Sazegara was arrested by plainclothes security officers who gave no reason for their actions, Vahid Sazegara told The Associated Press.

"The plainclothes security agents confiscated many of my father's papers, computer parts and CDs before taking him to jail," Sazegara said.

Police contacted by AP refused to comment. Iranian authorities usually do not comment on detentions.

The detention followed an article by Sazegara last week in which he called for an amendment to the constitution.

In the article, Sazegara wrote that Iranian popular will was being held hostage to the decisions of six hard-line clerics on the Guardian Council, a conservative group that vets legislation and candidates for elections.

This situation has led to "increasing dictatorship, corruption, inefficiency, violence and poverty," Sazegara wrote. "The experience of the past five years shows that the Islamic establishment cannot be reformed. It cannot be efficient."

He said President Mohammad Khatami was wrong to think he could bring about "Islamic democracy" under the ruling establishment.

In the article, which was published on the reformist Persian-language Web site called alliran, Sazegara repeated an allegation made in 2000 when he wrote a daring open letter to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying his absolute rule amounted to dictatorship.

In the past three years, Iranian judges have closed down about 90 pro-democracy publications and jailed dozens of reformist journalists and political activists.

Sazegara's arrest came as a U.N. human rights delegation, led by Louis Joined of France, toured Iran for talks with the government and visits to detention centers in several cities.